I know I work in a rarefied area when it comes to the latest in electric vehicle (EV) technology. On any given day of my Silicon Valley commute to Page Mill Road in Palo Alto, I see hot little Teslas, Fiskers, Volts, and Leafs – sometimes all in the same day. But don’t take my word for it if you haven’t yet seen an EV yourself. You can take a look at the research and news coverage.

With this solution SAP provides an aggregated view of charge data records from multiple charge spot providers through our cloud, which in turn offers utilities customers excellent visibility into EV charging patterns in their service territory, and new opportunities for customer engagement. Watch this video for an overview of the solution:

Beyond charge data record aggregation as a base service, customers can subscribe to additional services as modules, such as sophisticated pricing through Convergent Charging in the cloud. The service allows you to build useful mobile applications that surface charging network status and can further promoteengagement with the utility by their end-user customers.

To be clear, the opportunity goes beyond utilities and automotive customers and their consumers — as developers within the SAP community, you will also play an active role in helping these industries adapt. You can look forward to new ways to get involved to help your automotive and utilities companies both overcome and leverage these new challenges in the electric-powered world. As I reported last year from the Web 2.0 Summit:

We figured out about six years ago there lots of systems creating data exhaust. If we harness it, that’s big value… Cars are reporting a lot of things — from how fast the car is going, to the temperature outside (is the road about to ice over?), to exactly where they go (so maps can be way more accurate), to whether the windshield wipers are on – are they high or low? This allows our cars of the future to say “here’s the right driving route for you today based on all this factual data.

There are already huge amounts of data to leverage in your car’s exhaust – and in a new world of connected cars, this data will open up to you as services. The possibilities will only increase (even if the exhaust doesn’t). Stay tuned.